Kickstarted: Homestuck

Comedy video games that produce actual comedy may be a rarity, but there is a subcategory that has an even smaller inventory: video games that parody video games.
Sure some games have made jokes about video games in the course of their story, but doing one that makes fun of video games from the start screen to the closing credits is nearly impossible because you’re biting the humorless hand that feeds you. Plus, the higher you go up the gaming food chain, the harder you have to bite to make it work.
A select few have somehow made it across the finish line. The most recent example came in the form of a fictional video game hero named Matt Hazard in a disastrous title called

Comedy video games that produce actual comedy may be a rarity, but there is a subcategory that has an even smaller inventory: video games that parody video games.

Sure some games have made jokes about video games in the course of their story, but doing one that makes fun of video games from the start screen to the closing credits is nearly impossible because you’re biting the humorless hand that feeds you. Plus, the higher you go up the gaming food chain, the harder you have to bite to make it work.

A select few have somehow made it across the finish line. The most recent example came in the form of a fictional video game hero named Matt Hazard in a disastrous title called Eat Lead. It offered a fun poke at just about every major video game genre but they were weak shots at best. They also didn’t really land any hard jabs at the industry itself, which needed a heavy dose of self-deprecation since someone first thought of trying to turn square pixels into an entertainment experience. The funniest joke in the whole game was that the gameplay itself sucked out loud.

A very successful Kickstarter game could finally give us a game that does to/for video games what “Airplane!” and “Blazing Saddles” did for/to the movies.

What Are They Promising to Deliver?: Web comic artist and writer Andrew Hussie wants to bring his insanely popular and ridiculously brilliant comic masterpiece of the same name into the video game world. It’s a genius idea because the web comic version is itself a playful parody of video games, the chief joke being that it unfolds like an adventure style video game but the reader has no control over what happens as they read it.

It’s impossible to explain exactly what the game would be about or even like because the comic itself is nearly impossible to describe. The video on the Kickstarter page doesn’t help in the slightest. Maybe that’s the goal: To get completely lost in an insane game just as one can get lost in the endless adventures of the web comic. I’d also rather not spoil any of it since the reaction from reading it for hours on end is priceless. Now I’m starting to understand why it’s called “Homestuck”.

How Much Have They Raised So Far?: Hussie's studio MS Paint Adventures only needed $700,000 to get it off the ground. He got that in the first week. The campaign just ended with more than $2.4 million in donations. That is what is known in mathematician circles as a “butt-load”.

What Would You Get for Donating?: Those who helped the campaign reach its massive conclusion will be able to enjoy copies of the game, its epic metal soundtrack, exclusive sticker sheets and T-shirts, plush dolls of the series’ characters like Senator Lemonsnout and Pyralspite Plushie and primo appearances in the final product. Since the campaign is over, the only gift the rest of us can expect to receive is unrepentant regret and shame.